After watching the movie twice (once ‘regular’ 3D, than on IMAX, getting a copy of ‘Avatar – the game experience’ came naturally, regardless of the so-so reviews I found at Amazon. To my surprise, I do NOT regret making this purchase – not because Avatar is an exceptionally innovative game but because it keeps the world of Pandora alive and teaming with life and conflict as we are all waiting for some more affordable ‘at home’ 3D technology to make the real Avatar and maybe a sequel or two possible in our living room.

So, briefly, the game is VERY good at giving us a sort of bird’s eye view of Pandora – the color, the features, the wild life, RDA’s war machines are all pretty good renderings of Cameron’s cinematic masterpiece – a 3D mode is possible but we don’t have that kind of a TV so we can only imagine what a 3D game would look like. Gameplay itself, while a bit repetitive, is not that bad and the lack of variety in weapons and skillsets is compensated by the several play modes. As for replay value, it really depends on how much you enjoyed the movie. By the way, I would not recommend playing this game unless you watched the movie because you can’t play Avatar with a cold heart.

GAME SETUP

You have the ability to give your character a first name – last name is always Ryder and you are a signal specialist. The game lets you shape you gender and appearance and, while at it, you will see how both your human and Na’vi face are going to look like. There are no difficulty settings so, unless you want to tinker with the sound settings or other minutia, you’re ready to go.

Of course, there will come a point in the game where you will have to choose between sticking with the humans or joining the Na’vis.

GAMEPLAY

The beginning doesn’t look like much – you show up at the base and you run chores. Well… as you do that you gain experience points that bring more skills and you are allowed to access more articles from the Pandoran version of Wikipedia that can give you some idea of what you are dealing with. Eventually, in the story mode, you will have to decide on which side you really are. If you stick with the humans, you’ll be riding mechanized vehicles and firing range weapons and lay waste to Pandora’s wildlife and native population. If you pick the Na’vi, your bow is complemented with melee weapons and you’ll be riding those amazing Pandoran dragons and… well… slaughter the little machine-gun firing but rather fragile humans.

The game play is very simple and easy to learn. You can evade, jump, shoot, and slow down time temporarily for climatic moments. You can do a lot of climbing in some parts however you cannot grab on to ledges and the terrain can get very confusing because of that. Sometimes you have to endlessly look for some vine to climb after giving up your attempts to climb the terrain without it. As a human, relying on ranged weapons exclusively can annoy some people because they constantly have to retreat from incoming enemies. As a Na’vi you have some melee weapons that can make many enemies easier to kill if they get too hard for your normal bow and arrow.

GAME MODES

If you want to take a break from story mode there is the conquest mode. Here you can command armies to conquer territory – send the humans back home if you are a Na’vi or eliminate the Na’vi if you are with the humans. All you see in the conquest mode is the statistics of what happens so don’t expect any climatic cut scenes. This mode can also benefit the normal story mode by giving you spoils as you progress through the game. These two parts of the game can refresh each other continually.

If you do multiplayer you go head to head with other players around the world on different maps throughout the game. There are many scenarios and maps so it stays fresh for a while. This mode can also help your skills for single play as well to help you get better. You usually pick between the Na’vi and humans so you can pick the side you are best with but, with good players it can get quite predictable with the humans continuously retreating and firing their weapons and the Na’vi trying to get close and engage in a melee that they almost always win.

So, to summarize, you can play Avatar as follows:

- Na’vi in story mode

- Human in story mode

- Na’vi in contest mode

- Human in contest mode

- Na’vi in multiplayer

- Human in multiplayer

MY RATING

Avatar could have been a blockbuster, the way the movie is but it’s not quite there. It’s a competently layout game with stunning visuals and offering some variety but there is very little as far as character development goes, there aren’t too many weapons and the action, whether playing the conquest or the shootouts can be a little repetitive.

I’ve enjoyed playing Avatar for the first few hours and I expect to come back to it from time to time but, while a ‘good’ game, I would not call it ‘top notch’ so it’s going to get 4 stars overall.

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